Runestone (12 page)

“Ah, I am Odin, father of the gods! It is good.”

Nils started to tell the man that this was hardly an honor. The name had been given as a joke, a cruel joke that was designed to make fun of the man’s infirmity. He had not completely realized that before.
That
, he thought,
was why I was uncomfortable when he asked
. He found himself searching for a way to apologize, but could not. Even more startling, maybe, was a new realization. Odin
understood
the joke, and even enjoyed sharing in it. Nils remembered again his thought that this was far from an ignorant savage. Odin was a clever man.

“Yes,” Nils murmured in embarrassed agreement. “It is good.”

N
ils chafed under the inactivity during the entire next day. If it had not been for his one-eyed companion, he might have acted unwisely. Repeatedly, Odin restrained him from exposing their position.

“No, Thorsson! Stay down!”

So they remained hidden behind the screening bushes along the river’s edge. Three times boats skirted past the rapids and along the shore, circling, searching. Each time Nils was tempted to step out and scream a challenge. It would at least bring the conflict to an end. Once, even, when a boat with two heavily armed savages drifted within a bowshot of their place of concealment, he tensed his muscles to rise. But a hand gripped his wrist firmly. He tried to pull away, but the Skraeling was surprisingly strong. Angrily, Nils turned to meet the gaze of the single good eye. Odin’s expression was stern, and his manner serious.

“No!” the man indicated by a shake of the head. He laid a finger to his lips to caution silence. Slowly, Nils’s anger cooled, as the boat drifted past downstream.

The activity across the river continued. Dozens of warriors moved up and down the portage trail carrying plunder, loading bundles into the skin boats. Occasionally a heavily loaded boat would shove off from the opposite shore and move upstream, propelled by a skilled oarsman.

It was apparent that other warriors were still beating the brush where any surviving Norsemen might be hiding. It was difficult to gauge the extent of their success. Once a flurry of excited shouts seemed to indicate the discovery of a fugitive, but it stopped abruptly. Nils was not sure.

About that time, however, their plight really began to sink
home to him. The activity across the river, the boat that had come searching, even the massacre itself he had seen in a sort of detached dream. It was as if he had been watching a scene that had no real connection to him.

There is an illogical approach to life that makes the young among us consider themselves immortal. But there comes a day of reckoning when one realizes the truth of the fragile nature of our continued existence. It is a frightening transformation, too late for some—possibly only a heartbeat before the mortality is proven in the finality of death. Maybe there is not even the heartbeat’s time for the realization before it descends.

For Nils Thorsson this was the day of realization. It did not come with lofty thoughts of Valhalla, but in a wave of perception that jarred him back to reality:
Those warriors on the other shore want to kill me!
Until now his training in weapons, the games and skills and contests, had all been in play. But this was the real thing.
Me!
No longer was his only problem how to get home, but whether he would be alive to try.

Nils shook himself. No, he must not think of failure. There
would
be a way, if he could find it. While he was alive, he would be trying. And, if it so happened, and this was the time when death overtook him, so be it. He would die like a Viking, with a weapon in his hand. Yes, outnumbered, hopelessly stranded, he could still show the Skraelings the pride with which a Viking dies, and could take a few along with him.

Nils glanced at Svenson. The sailor was sleeping, curled on a mossy hummock. For a moment, Nils resented such detachment, but then recovered his reason. Sven had survived many crises at sea and ashore, and his calm strength had carried him through. He was saving it now.
Yes
, thought Nils,
when the time comes, Sven will be ready
. The two of them could stand together and smite the Skraelings in a way they would never forget.

And what about Odin? Nils did not know what to expect of that one. A strange, complicated man, with many puzzling loyalties. There was actually no reason for him to be here.
Odin, when he had crept away in the night, could have simply kept going, back to his own people. It was unclear to Nils why he had not done so. There must have been some glimmer of duty there. Gratitude, perhaps, for the shelter and protection that the Norsemen had given him at Straumfjord. Nils felt a twinge of embarrassment at that. All that had been accorded to the Skraeling was the right to sleep inside the palisade fence instead of outside. That was no great gift of kindness, to be repaid at the risk of one’s own life.

Maybe there was more to this man. He had, Nils recalled, managed to learn the tongue of the Norsemen very quickly, and spoke it well, though he was sometimes frugal with words. Odin seemed also to take great interest in the sun-stone. The Skraeling seemed to realize its importance in some degree. And it was, of course, a great—

Nils rolled from his reclining position and sat up abruptly, his pulses pounding.
The stone! Where was it?
Then despair washed over him as he realized that the device had probably gone to the bottom of the fjord with the charred remains of the
Norsemaiden
. It must have been in Helge’s pouch when they laid the bodies on the deck that had now become the funeral pyre.
Stupid, stupid!
he cursed himself.

“What is it, Thorsson?” asked the Skraeling, his voice little more than a whisper.

“What? Oh, it is nothing, Odin. Too late now. I was thinking of the stone. The sun-stone, you remember?”

“Oh, that. Here.”

To Nils’s shocked amazement, the Skraeling reached inside his furred tunic, drew out the leather pouch that held the stone, and handed it across.

“You were busy, so I took it,” he explained, “from the other man’s belt.”

Now Nils’s thoughts whirled in confusion. Had the man hoped to keep it for himself? That would be a likely thing. Yet his entire manner suggested otherwise. There had been no remorse, no guile in his face. It would have been possible, even, for Odin to deny all knowledge of the stone, so that he could keep it. Instead, at first mention of its loss, he had instantly produced it. There seemed to be not a hint of guilt,
only the matter-of-fact statement, “I took it.” It was as if the Skraeling felt a duty to care for such a valuable thing until it was asked for.
In the same way he is caring for our lives!
Nils thought. The whole thing was far more complex than he wanted to consider at this time, in his present state of exhaustion.

“Thank you. It is good,” he mumbled, embarrassed by his suspicions.

Shadows were growing long now, and the Skraelings across the river seemed more quiet. The almost frantic activity of the day was slowing. There were not so many of them now, it seemed. Then he realized that they actually were fewer because many boats laden with plunder had departed. There would be celebrations in the villages upstream tonight. Supplies, weapons, souvenirs would probably be displayed and traded as the savages recounted their deeds of valor.

As darkness fell, they could see the fires on the other shore.
Afire would be pleasant
, thought Nils. His muscles were stiff, and still retained some of the chill from the previous night. He had not had opportunity to work that out, to warm himself with activity. Now came mosquitos to torture any exposed areas of skin. The tiny creatures had been an annoyance the night before, but the enormity of what was happening had distracted him somewhat. Now they returned with a vengeance. If only he could stand in the smoke to the leeward of one of those fires for a little while, that would help.

Odd how such a thing becomes of such importance, he reflected. With his world crumbling around him, the most meaningful thing he could desire right now would be the warmth of a fire, and its smoke to drive away mosquitos. When big things are destroying one’s life, one clings to small comforts.

The call of a hunting owl sounded from the timber behind them, hollow and ghostly in the gathering gloom. Odin looked up quickly, and then settled back.

“Kookooskoos,” he said.

“What?”

“Kookooskoos, the owl. He cries out his name.”

“Oh.”

The call of the owl was slightly different from that at home, but he understood its similarity, too. And the Skraeling, whose world must also be collapsing, had recognized this cry as something that was
not
changing. Something stable and dependable, an ongoing scene of the nightly hunt that would continue for many lifetimes beyond their own. It seemed something stable, something to cling to, a dependable factor in a world gone suddenly mad.

As the darkness deepened, Odin rose and stretched.

“I go to see what is happening,” he announced. “Do you want some food?”

Nils considered for a moment. He had progressed beyond the point where the hunger pangs gnawed at his stomach. He recognized the clarity of the senses that comes with fasting. He was not accustomed to thoughts of death or of the importance of a fire and its smoky protection. He had been told how fasting would improve and sharpen the senses, make a warrior quicker and more efficient. Well, this must be what he was experiencing now.

“No,” Nils answered, “I will fast a little longer.”

Odin looked over at Svenson, who shook his head in the negative. “I, too,” he said.

The Skraeling seemed pleased, somehow, a reaction that puzzled Nils. Why should it matter? The conservation of their scant supplies, maybe?

“I go now,” Odin stated. “I will come back.”

He seemed to vanish silently into the night.

For Nils, there was less concern than there had been on the previous night. Where before he had fretted, suspicious that the man might not return, now he had few doubts. He did not fully understand why, but he was willing to accept that Odin had cast his lot with them. Since the Skraeling had returned once, there was no reason to think that he would not return again.

Nils settled down to wait. He had appropriated the sword that Odin had salvaged the night before, and now hefted it to test its balance.
Not bad
, he thought,
but not the best
. Maybe
Odin would find a weapon of better quality. The Skraeling had been fascinated with the “big knife,” apparently because he had not seen many of them. A heavy, double-edged sword of the Norse style was an excellent weapon for hand-to-hand combat, but this New World had called for little of that as yet. Bowmen would have been more important in the battle just past, if it had really been a battle.
Ah, how stupid
, Nils thought for perhaps the hundredth time,
to be caught off guard. And twice!

He glanced over at Svenson, poorly seen in the dim light. The older man had taken the ax that Odin had brought back. It seemed appropriate, somehow. A versatile tool, it could be of multiple uses. Its great broad blade could fell trees, dress timbers, or split firewood. And when the time came, it was a weapon not to be discounted.
Like Sven himself
, thought Nils. The sailor’s long years on the water had fitted him for the helmsman’s tasks. In addition, he was quiet and dependable, and though Nils had never seen him in a fight, he had no doubt that the man would be a dangerous foe. He could imagine Sven’s effectiveness with a battle-ax. …

A slight noise distracted him, and Nils dropped to a fighting crouch, gripping the haft of the sword.

“It is I, Odin!” came a soft call.

The Skraeling was breathing heavily, and seemed more excited than Nils had ever seen him.

“What—?” Nils began, but the Skraeling stopped him with a gesture.

“They have found the boat,” he said quickly. “Chopped it.”

Nils’s heart sank. How could they travel now? That thought had hardly made itself known until a more urgent one sank in. Before he could voice it, Odin did so.

“If they did that,” the Skraeling went on, “they know that we are here. Alive, and on this side of the river. Come, we must go.”